1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to electronic calendars and in particular, to managing flexible events in an electronic calendar. Further, the present invention relates to managing positioning of flexible events in an electronic calendar to provide more scheduling options for other events in the electronic calendar.
2. Description of the Related Art
Electronic calendaring systems continue to replace the traditional paper calendaring systems of the past. One advantage of electronic calendaring is that a user may make changes to an electronic schedule without needing to erase or mark through a page in the calendaring system. Another advantage of many electronic calendaring systems is that multiple users, such as business colleagues, can access one another's electronic calendars via a network and schedule meetings or other events in one another's electronic calendars. For example, one user may search for time that is not already scheduled in the other user's electronic calendar and add a meeting to the previously unscheduled time in the other user's electronic calendar.
While electronic calendaring systems include many advantages, a limitation of electronic calendaring systems is that calendaring systems only track scheduled events in fixed time slots. Thus, for a user to block other users from scheduling in an electronic calendar, the user must either specifically schedule an event during a time slot or block the time slot from being filled by other users. This limitation of requiring fixed slot scheduling is apparent when it is considered that there are actual events in a user's daily schedule that are not fixed, but are flexible and could occur within a particular time period, rather than during a particular time slot. For example, a user may need 2 hours in a day to write a report sometime during the day, but for the user to schedule the 2 hours in an electronic calendaring system, the user must actually fix the 2 hours to a particular 2 hour time slot. Once the user schedules the 2 hours to a particular time slot, that time slot is no longer available for another user to schedule a meeting, even though the user's schedule includes other open 2 hour time slots.
Therefore, in view of the foregoing, there is a need for a method, system, and program for managing electronic calendaring systems to include flexible scheduled items with set duration, but with flexible start and end times within a schedule to improve scheduling flexibility of other schedule items within an electronic calendar.